A Model of Conformity to the Perceived Majority

I develop a theory of group interaction in which individuals who act sequentially are concerned about signaling what they believe is the majority group preference. Equilibrium dynamics may result in a perverse situation where most individuals reluctantly act in a way they mistakenly believe is cooperative, a situation known as ‘pluralistic ignorance’. Strong beliefs over others’ views increases pluralistic ignorance in small groups, but decreases it in large groups. Behavior may be affected by leaders, laws or surveys that influence what is thought to be the majority preference, possibly creating pluralistic ignorance. Abrupt social change may come about through an everyman who reveals what everyone wishes they were doing. The model integrates insights from scholarship on collective action, public opinion, and social meaning regulation, and then applies these insights to political economy phenomena such as misperceived support for discriminatory policies, the rise of the Arab Spring, beliefs about climate change beliefs, conflict resolution, and the impact of get out the vote campaigns. ∗The latest version of the paper can be found at https://scholar.harvard.edu/duque/research. I would like to thank Samuel Asher, Nava Ashraf, Robert Bates, Iris Bohnet, Jeffry Frieden, Benjamin Golub, Michael Hiscox, Horacio Larreguy, Scott Kominers, Pia Raffler, Kenneth Shepsle and seminar participants at Harvard University. †Harvard University. E-mail: [email protected].